Details below.

Linda Curtis, Independent Texans http://IndyTexans.org

Debra Medina for Governor

Independent Texans’ members are well aware of Governor Rick Perry’s record which is why he received not one vote of support from our members.   Perry has become legendary for his abuses of power and the veto pen, his revolving door for lobbyists, and for poisoning the halls of the legislature with a redistricting gerrymander on steroids back in 2003.  For Texas independents Perry is the embodiment of what is so wrong in government today.  Rick Perry is such a problem for political independents that we have resorted to joking about it at BootPerry.org to make our point.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, who received about 30% support from our members, grasps our concerns about the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), but has not yet fully made the connection between such policy monstrosities as the TTC and political reform.  Though the same might be said for Debra Medina, our endorsement of Mrs. Medina springs from the long-held desires of independent voters for citizen legislators.  Debra is an ordinary person (a nurse to be exact) who has held her own in this race with two titans in Texas politics.  She has demonstrated that she deserves our support.

What Independents Want – A United Front for Reform

Since 1992 when Ross Perot received the largest independent vote in US history, independent voters (now at 41% of the American electorate – Pew Research Center, May 2009) and our concerns, have grown.  We are even sicker today of the partisan gamesmanship that keeps voters fighting amongst ourselves while the big shots in both parties have put the economy and our very livelihoods on the edge of a cliff.

We never liked Bush bashing and we don’t like Obama bashing either.  We want the parties to either come together or get out of the way.  We – Americans of all persuasions — want to be part of the conversation about fixing our problems before it is too late.

Once every ten years we, as a country, have an opportunity to damp down the partisan game immediately following the census.  It is called redistricting. We can no longer afford to allow politicians to choose their own voters.  We must take the gerrymandering weapon out of the hands of both parties, through a non-partisan independent redistricting commission.  This is the single most important thing Texans need to bring any real policy solutions to the table.  Is there a gubernatorial candidate out there who will stand up for a Texas Redistricting Commission?  Rick Perry would never sign it.  Would Kay?  Debra Medina…our best hope. (Read more about political reform here.)

We independents used to think we had to have a leader to guide us.  There was Perot, Nader and Jesse Ventura, or more recently in Texas there was Carole and Kinky.  They made a contribution, but their political careers got the best of them and they too began talking about us in the third person or not at all.

President Barack Obama?  He spoke to us powerfully with his post-partisan message before election day, but since then hasn’t made an effort to reach out to us.  Instead, his political crew made a decision to build Organizing for America within the confines of the Democratic National Committee, even when his campaign ground game guru, Marshall Ganz (a brilliant political organizer) advised him not to.

It’s the same old story.  There is the rush to get elected.  They tell us, “Trust us, we will include you.”  Some of them even sincerely mean it.

Howard Fineman wrote in the latest edition of Newsweek about how the President can win back independents.  Fineman says for independents “it’s all about process.”  But then he goes on to quote budget hawk and moderate Democrat, Evan Bayh who says the President is, “to the left of the mainstream.”  Does Evan Bayh or Fineman have any clue that most Americans either do not know the difference between politically left and right or simply don’t give a rip? This out-dated paradigm makes no sense to most independent voters who hold a variety of views on issues.  For example, many Texas independents, though we are largely understood as conservatives, believe that the banks rule the world and they should be overthrown.  That is a left-wing idea supported by the right-wing John Birch Society!

So here is my advice as someone who has been out there for 30 years walking the walk of independent politics.  First, why don’t you just ask us?  We want to be part of the political conversation in our country.  We cannot be part of the conversation when our participation is choked off by unfair restrictions and regulations designed to limit competition to the two-parties like impossible petitioning requirements, government apparatus’ like the Federal Election Commission (3 Democrats and 3 Republicans) and Redistricting committees that have representatives from the two parties only.  We need open primaries in all 50 states (one of the few progressive features of Texas elections) and the right to petition to place issues on the ballot (initiative, referendum and recall) at all levels of Texas government – not just municipalities Texans are limited to currently.   Government should protect our rights to petition rather than participating in criminalizing such a fundamental right to organize in our country.*  And how ’bout those term limits?**

Texas politicians naturally do things bigger and badder than most.  That is why Texans desperately need the right to recall politicians at the state level.  If Texans had the right to recall state officials, Rick Perry would have had to “get on down the road” years ago for his outrageous manipulations of state laws and state agencies to carry out the largest land seizure in US history related to Trans-Texas Corridor.  Not long after the Governor pronounced the Corridor DOA (in large part because Republicans fled to the independent movement based on this issue), it became apparent the Governor was involved in covering up the fact that he allowed the execution of an innocent man (Todd Willingham).  Our legislature would never impeach Rick Perry based on these “high crimes and misdemeanors”, but you can bet that ordinary Texans would have pulled the political recall trigger if we could get our fingers on it.

We wish we could say these ideas are new.  Perot in 1996 said that the problems in government are vertical not horizontal.  In other words, the conflicts in America are increasingly between the few people at the top with the people at the bottom, who are the vast majority of Americans.  In other words, the left-center-right paradigm that keeps ordinary Americans fighting amongst each other rendering us vulnerable to the manipulations of the parties and their corporate backers, was DOA 14 years ago!

The Massachusetts upset will pale in comparison to what Texas independents can do in the Texas gubernatorial where we have the opportunity to ‘recall’ Governor Rick Perry.  Independent Texans, the state’s only voter association seeking recognition for approximately 4 million independent Texas voters, is urging Texas independents to vote in the open Republican primary, to send Rick Perry down his toll roads once and for all.  Watch for our endorsement shortly before early voting starts on February 16th.  We can shop the ballot in November between the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian nominees.  (Don’t forget to go to http://BootPerry.org/give-him-the-boot and give ol’ Rick a kick right now and donate to our just cause!)

The American people that politicians and pundits like to banter about so much are in one particular way woefully culpable in the political predicament in which we find ourselves.  We are like parents who don’t want to admit our role in raising irresponsible children.  We vote for our “children” (or ignore them by not voting) – politicians in both parties – and we complain about them endlessly.   Maybe American voters are ready for a new role in political life.  That would be a change for sure.  And that is one change that we, the people, can do for sure.

*  The right to petition is so fundamental, volumes could be written about the attempts to stymie petitioner’s rights.  Independents will never forget the Attorney General of Oklahoma’s recent attempts to criminalize petitioning by arresting Paul Jacob, a leader of the term limits and initiative movement and Susan Johnson, President of National Voter Outreach – one of the premier petitioning companies in the country.  The case was thrown out, but not without heavy burdens placed on Jacob and Johnson.  The right to petition is still not protected in public places like outside the Post Office!

**  So far, in the Governor’s race, Kay Bailey Hutchison is promising to help enact term limits on the Governor’s Office.  Let’s hope that includes all state officials, but we’ll take it if it’s only the Governor’s office.

Depraved indifference is what many of the state’s most conservative constituents, some of them still Republicans and many of them who have since “gone independent,” would have liked to see the Governor criminally charged with.

Texans of all political hues have learned to despise this Governor for conspiring with the big wigs at TxDOT, various road contractors and developers, and the Spanish toll road consortium, CINTRA, to take our land for the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC).  In fact, if Perry’s land takings for the TTC had gone forward fully (some of it is still planned) it would have resulted in the largest land seizure in the history of the United States—and created a massive scar across Texas.

You gotta hand it to Rick Perry.  He never ceases to one-up his own depravity.  That is why not many in Texas were ‘shocked’ as Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project put it, when Rick Perry decided to boldly in plain view cover up what we all who are following this latest scar on Texas, in our heart-of-hearts, know to be true.  An innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana, was put to death in 2004 in Texas.  The evidence of his innocence was in Rick Perry’s hands before the execution with well enough time to delay if not stop it.  The Governor chose to ignore the truth.

The Governor has proven his own culpability and now everybody’s talking about it, from ABC’s Nightline to practically every newspaper in the state.  The Governor used (or more accurately, abused) his power to cancel a hearing on the sham science used in the arson investigation of the Willingham case.  This was to be presented last week before the Texas Forensic Science Commission.  Rick Perry fired his own appointed chair of the Commission and refused to re-appoint two others.  All three supported bringing out the facts in this hearing.  Perry’s new appointee quickly canceled the hearing.

A reporter today wrote that no Texans will care about Rick Perry’s depravity in this case, I gather because Texans love the death penalty.  What might be more detrimental to the Governor’s reelection chances, this reporter speculated, is his rudeness and tackiness towards Kay Bailey Hutchison who is a “lady.” Perhaps.  But I like to think that Texans do care about such things as innocence and guilt, not to mention the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Private property rights and the right to life are intertwined in the minds of most Texans I know.  Rick Perry is not anything like them.

Here’s all the evidence you need to understand what’s going on here:

This will show you that the Governor knew the truth about Willingham’s innocence before the execution:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Willingham_foia.pdf?phpMyAdmin=52c4ab7ea46t7da4197

For a detailed description of the Willingham story in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

The Governor’s explanation of his actions are here in the Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/091809dnmetperrycorsicana.19263f09c.html

This came out after the articles above hit – Perry’s own counsel had the arson “junk science” thrown out in his own case, but advised Perry to uphold it in the Willingham case.  Maybe Rick Perry should be in jail?:  http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/10/perrys-general-counsel-benefit.html

Check out the most recent update from CBS Jan 21 – Perry’s appointed cronies trying to put this off until after the March primary and out of site in S. Texas:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/21/ap/national/main6125734.shtml